Voters Grow Weary of Washington's Drama

The Two Parties' Ongoing Budget Battles Are 'Old Hat' and Faraway to Many Residents in One Arizona Swing District

By

Kristina Peterson

Updated Feb. 24, 2013 10:20 p.m. ET

CASA GRANDE, Ariz.—In Washington, leaders of both political parties are warning of dire effects if across-the-board federal budget cuts aren't averted. Here in this swing congressional district in Arizona, voters all along the political spectrum say they aren't moved by the alarms.

After two years of creating and then resolving a series of budget showdowns, lawmakers are losing the power to summon concern—or even much interest—among the public, voters here say.

"It just happens so often, it's white noise to me," said Eric Jones, general manager and partner of the Glenn Jones Ford dealer in Casa Grande, who is a Republican. The budget cuts, known in Washington parlance as sequestration, would come less than two months after a fight between President
Barack Obama
and congressional Republicans over tax increases and spending cuts, called the fiscal cliff, which were resolved right as they were kicking in.

ENLARGE

LaVelle McCoy, left, helps client Tom Chabin at McCoy Motors in Flagstaff, Ariz. Mr. McCoy, chief executive of the dealership, said the sequester could affect his business by crimping consumer spending even further.
Brandon Sullivan for The Wall Street Journal

"They always wait until the last minute," said Doug Culpepper, a Democrat and nurse, while getting a haircut at the Clip Joint here. The constant squabbles have left him tired of finger-pointing, he said. "I don't pay attention to who's doing what."

Residents in this city south of Phoenix were focused on more immediate concerns last week than on budget-cut recriminations between the two parties. Unusual winter storms that produced snow and hail overshadowed most news from Washington.

Matt Herman, a Republican whose family owns an RV dealership, said the fiscal fights are starting to be "old hat" with locals. "They don't believe it's going to happen, because every time we come up to the debt ceiling or the fiscal cliff or the sequester, the government just passes the next bill," said Mr. Herman, who is a Casa Grande City Council member.

Arizona's First Congressional District is divided politically—it backed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney last year while sending a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives—which makes it a good sounding board for the current fiscal debate.

The lack of alarm here has implications for lawmakers, particularly for Mr. Obama and Democratic Party officials, who are trying to portray the pending cuts as damaging to defense, education and other programs.

Their goal is to persuade voters to push Republicans to agree to higher tax revenue as part of any plan to replace the budget cuts with a longer-term deficit-reduction plan.

Republicans say they agreed to raise tax rates on the wealthy in January and don't want to raise revenues again. While some Republicans embrace the cuts as a needed step to rein in the deficit, some also warn they will have a significant effect, especially on defense programs.

But many voters here say they don't see harm to themselves in the looming cuts—"not a bit," said Flagstaff resident Patrick Shiels, a registered libertarian and a professional artist and engineer. He said he thinks all $1.2 trillion in planned cuts over the next decade ought to be implemented this year.

That feeling isn't universal. Some worry about education cuts, and some say defense cuts could hurt the state's economy. A study for the Aerospace Industries Association by George Mason University and Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. ranked Arizona ninth among states most vulnerable to defense jobs that could be lost because of the sequester.

LaVelle McCoy, president and chief executive of McCoy Motors Inc., a car dealership in Flagstaff, said customers long have been opting for vehicles with lower payments. The sequester "conceivably can exacerbate that" by crimping consumer spending, Mr. McCoy said, though he believes spending cuts are inevitable. Still, he views the latest crisis as less worrisome than previous episodes. "The fiscal cliff, psychologically, was more ominous," he said.

Many residents here find the two parties equally to blame for the latest budget tangle. "They're fighting like 2-year-olds," Bryan Schultz, a politically unaffiliated information-technology contractor for industrial giant Honeywell International Inc., said at the Cotton Bowl Lanes bowling alley in Casa Grande. "They need to get their act together."

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